SN Archive (1999): What makes Dominik Hasek the NHL GOAT goaltender as told by Wayne Gretzy, Jaromir Jagr and others originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
With Buffalo in the playoffs for the first time since 2011, we look back at the greatest Sabre of all-time: Dominik Hasek. This feature, 'Dominating' by Larry Wigge, was the cover story for the February 22, 1999 issue of The Sporting News.
He stares down his opponent like a witness to a crime, going up and down the faces, the moves of suspects in a lineup. His green eyes glare with attentiveness, noting every detail.
The pieces of this puzzle Dominik Hasek faces don't resemble Eric Lindros, John LeClair, Rod Brind'Amour or Eric Desjardins of the Flyers, but they are just as important at the moment.
Hasek has met his opponent and beaten him — again. His eyes twinkle “Checkmate.”
Friend Joseph Safar, a Buffalo surgeon and Czech Republic native, knows how it feels to attempt to stare down Hasek ... and lose. Safar was thinking to himself about that very subject after he had finished a friendly game of chess with “The Dominator” less than 24 hours after watching Hasek almost single-handedly upset Philadelphia in the first round of the playoffs, while holding Lindros and LeClair to one goal apiece in five games.
“I'd like to know his I.Q.,” Safar says in admiration. “He could be a chess grand master if he wanted to.”
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But Hasek sees the game of chess as merely a means to an end: The form of concentration that will make him a better goaltender. He doesn't want to be a chess grand master — he wants to be the perfect goaltender.
Because he is so unorthodox, some experts may never consider him the perfect model for a goalie. Hasek's goaltending style, in fact, is really no style at all — just an all-out assault on the puck.
“Damn, he's good,” says Hall of Fame goal-tender Gerry Cheevers. “He reminds me of Wayne Gretzky and his instincts for the game— and how he always seems to know where the puck is and where it is going to be. It's like he controls what is going to happen. I couldn't do that when I played."
“People go to watch Dominik Hasek because he is an entertainer; he lifts them out of their seats. He uses his glove, his blocker, his stick, his legs, his chest like other goalies. But he he's so different, because he also uses his back and stomach when he scrambles around like a snow angel on the ice. Hell, I'll swear I've also seen him use his head — on purpose — to stop a shot.”
'White Chocolate' has arrived for the Kings
Sean Burke sits in the Flyers' locker room after losing to Hasek last spring. He doesn't have time for chess. He's about to become a free agent — and he feels he let down his team because all of the games were close, three of them decided by one goal. Watching Hasek, the acrobat, beat his team, Burke says, “If I tried to make the kind of saves he does, I'd break every bone in my body and be in a body cast for at least six months. He's simply amazing.”
How do you top being the first goalie to be named Most Valuable Player in the NHL since Montreal's Jacques Plante in 1962? Well, you simply win it a second straight time, as Hasek did last season. No goalie had ever done that — and he has a great chance for a three-peat this season. (Editor's note: Hasek finished third behind Jaromir Jagr and Alexei Yashin.)
“This guy is God,” Lightning G.M./coach Jacques Demers says. “He's on a different planet.”
There's a pause in Demers' voice when he's asked if Hasek is the best goalie of all-time. “If I had to pick one, I have to go with Patrick Roy because I won a Stanley Cup with Patrick in Montreal,” he says. “Patrick Roy has won three Cups, and that's what counts. But as soon as Dominik Hasek wins a Cup — and he will in the next few years — he will be right there with Roy.”
(Editor's note: In a Sporting News poll of over 3,000 fans conducted in 1999, just eight total votes separated Roy and Hasek.)
Stanley Cup or not, the Rangers' Gretzky says Hasek is clearly the first player he'd take if he were starting a team, not Roy. Best goalie? Gretzky goes one step further. “He's simply a phenom,” Gretzky says. “There's not a better player in the game right now.”
Hasek's competitiveness is legendary. He was a midfielder in soccer and a junior tennis champion in Eastern Bohemia. He plays soccer, tennis and squash in the summer. “Whatever I do,” he says, “I do it 100 percent, not 99.9 percent.”